Tuesday, April 26, 2011

For profit colleges spend massively to defeat regulations

The for-profit higher education industry spent $8.1 million on lobbying activities in 2010, up from $3.3 million the year before, according to an analysis by The Huffington Post of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Corinthian College which owns Everest College, the controversial tech school with among the nation's highest student loan default rates, led the way, spending $1.28 million on lobbying. Everest opened a branch in Milwaukee earlier this year despite the opposition of several Common Council members including the district's Alderwoman, Melele Coggs, the Hillside Neighborhood Association, the NAACP, AFT Local 212, Voces de la Frontera and several student organizations.

The Huffington Post emphasized the sharp increase in such spending took place at the same time that the U.S. Department of Education is attempting to regulation for-profit colleges. But Harris Miller, president of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, said that the lobbying was "not unique in any sense," comparing it to "...Boeing or defense contractors using their money to promote an agenda, which is to win a contract of the U.S. government."

Anonymous. Here are some facts on corporate vs labor participation in electoral politics during the period when American politics began its dramatic shift anti-work shift. In 1976 there were 224 labor PACs, a number that would modestly increase to 261 a decade later. Over the same period corporate and trade PACs increased from 922 to 2,182. Throughout the decade corporate and trade PACs outspent labor by by between two and three to one. Between 1968 and 1978 corporate office in DC grew from 100 to 500. IN 1971 only 175 coporations had registered lobbyists in DC, by 1982 nearly 2,500 did.the number of Corporate PACs increased from about 300 in 1976 to over 1,200 by the middle of the '80s. You are wrong that corporations are taking a page out of labor's handbook. Rather corporation have written the handbook on how to buy and sell political influence.